Not gone...

I'm in the middle of a big re-write, and technically speaking, it's more like I'm starting out on a new story since the first draft was such a mess. I've learned a lesson, don't go anywhere without an outline. And really figure out your character and his/her flaws before writing one line of dialogue in the script.

It'll save you the trouble.

Hopefully I'll get to my Inception review soon, somewhere in the next two weeks, depending on when my friends decide to go see it. Fuck it, I won't wait for their asses if they take too long.

*Sigh

Is there a more pathetic thing than watching a movie alone in a theatre?

Predators Script Review

This is an extremely early draft for a predators sequel, because the main character in this piece is Dutch and not Adrien Brody. Yes, THAT Dutch. Ahnuld the governator, Dutch.

The story begins on a boat. We get this kickass introduction where these invisible beings board a ship. People die and Dutch, in his long scraggly hair (I imagined Arnie in his Conan The Barbarian days for this image) tries to jump ship.

Dutch gets surrounded, and more of these invisible beings reveal themselves. It can only mean one thing, ooohh shhitti--

But no, they aren't Predators, they're people, in Predator's armour!! Huh? Seriously what the hell is going on here? Nevermind that, they capture Dutch. Of course, with the advance weaponry, there's no way in hell Dutch is going to try to escape, at least not now. So he complies and goes along for the ride.

Soon, we learn that these people are on some snatch and grab mission. Dutch is apparently a wanted fugitive of sorts, and being the badass that he is, he ain't going to be taken away too easily. After they bring him into the ship and shed all that cool tech, he makes a desperate run to escape the ship falling soo short of actually accomplishing the feat. Of course he fails and they go on a trip to drop Dutch off on some planet for prisoners.

So the team goes off onto the planet to drop off Dutch and collect their pay. Easy, drop and run operation.

There couldn't be any complications, right?


"Wrong".

As you can expect, things go to shit as they try to escort Dutch to the prison complex. Predators reveal themselves, the team gets captured and Dutch runs away. The humans wake up inside a Predator camp, locked in a cage. Something tells me they aren't going to eat smores and sing Kumbaya around the campfire.

Moving around the camp, we see other Alien life forms in the cages. We get this weird cockroach like bug alien, and a praying mantis like thing among others.

If anything, this is more of an Aliens/Predators hybrid if you can call it that. The world in the original Predators had modern day technology and didn't have any of the cool sci fi things that this world has. This draft feels like it's bridging the gap between the cool sci-fi marines of Aliens to the universe of the Predators.

One of the problems I had with the script is that there's no Dutch for a lot of the story. The humans get kidnapped, Dutch escapes and he's not seen again until one of the transport team escapes the Predator camp (one of the last survivors). But to Rodriguez's credit, we're given an intimate glimpse into the rituals and lives of these Alien Warriors.

Another thing going against the script is that it feature a lot of characters. And I mean a lot. And they're basically all for the sake of Predator fodder. It does get a little difficult at times keeping track of who's who in the group because they all talk in this hyper masculine voice (even the woman in the group talks like a guy with the appetite of a sexual Tyrannosaurus). And it's pretty indicative of a script thin on an actual story. Most of the second act is watching the guys trying to escape only to be met with an untimely end.

All things considered though, Rodriguez does try to make each character shine in their own way. For example, Cadillac's character quirk is his insatiable appetite, he munches on any kind of shit he can find cause space food sucks ass, Hardwick's the woman in the group, not unlike Vasquez of Aliens and that should tell you all about her. And the rest... not so memorable save for their unique names. It's definitely a loaded cast to keep track of but it luckily rips a page from Aliens and we find that most of the cast dies (Duh, how else are you going to show how dangerous these Predators are?) so we don't have to keep track of all of these characters at once.

Plus, a lot of the team dies in very VERY gruesome ways. Dutch goes back to "save" some of the prisoners in the camp but only to so that he could find someone to help him pilot the ship. I thought it would be interesting to have Dutch camp around to survey the environment and cut back and forth between his reconnaissance of the area and the captured humans. But instead we're treated with a very gory middle section that shows the cage matches of the various other species trying to fight each other for the Predator's enjoyment. It gets kinda slow and repetitive in the middle because of this. We keep thinking that it's a story that is more about Dutch but he doesn't get his chance to shine and kick ass until much later.

So about the humans wearing Predator armour? What's up with that? Apparently, the humans on Earth have traded off their soldiers to the predators in exchange for military weapons, not because the governments of the world are a bunch of douches (thought they are), but for self preservation. Supply the humans and avoid extinction. The script does touch on a complex issue that seriously surprised me. How far are you willing to go to preserve the human race? Are the lives of a few soldiers meaningless to the survival of billions?

We also get an answer for why Arnold survived his encounter with the Predator. Turns out that one he met on Earth was just a pussy. Yeah, Arnie barely made it out alive fighting the pussies of the race. Guess it gives new context to this picture...



Hardened motherfuckers they are...

I found myself enjoying the script. Sure, characterization is pretty much thrown out the window for the most part, but I think it's acceptable in these scripts and the kills can be pretty gruesome. You have to give the guy credit though for finding many ways of cruelly killing off the humans. NOBODY gets off easy when they die.

Rodriguez has a certain talent for Macho-talk that at times, I found myself thinking "This really is the true sequel to Predator". C'mon, the original film is full of quote-ables. "Ain't got no time to Bleed", "If it bleeds, we can kill it", "This'll make you a sexual Tyrannosaurus", etc...

And of course, it isn't an Arnie script unless he's got a cheezy one liner, yep he has that too in this script. Dutch latches on to the ship as it flies away to escape, his legs get caught by the King Predator, Dutch gets his gun on him and says (in my imagined Arnold accent) "Fairwehl to Da King" and blasts his ass to Kingdom Come (couldn't help myself). Hehe, Classic Arnie.

Love it or hate it, bits of the script felt too much like Aliens. Instead of Space Marines, we get these... Space Marines with Predator technology. It felt more of a hybrid between Aliens and Predator and not necessarily an Alien vs Predator story. The macho talk from the original added with the cockiness and cool tech from what feels like James Cameron's Space Marines from aliens. Of course, it's not going to get more blatant than this line on pg 84

"this is the closest thing we'll see to an Alien vs Predator movie"

In all of the scripts that I've read over the past months (a year now actually...) I've come across a few that I've legitimately enjoyed enough to forget about the script's problems (Van Damme vs. Seagal anyone?). This is entertaining, and it reads like a movie. How many scripts have you read that are fun? Not too many from what I've come across in my time reading them, either I got bad taste in choosing scripts or script reading just isn't my thing.

One of the things I feel that gets lost for many writers when writing a script is having fun with an idea. It's scriptwriting, and many of your favourite films aren't going to be Casablanca or Citizen Kane, it's going to be some movie you have fun watching time and time again despite it's silliness. So don't try to be important when you write. Have fun and remember the lost days of when you were a kid playing with your action figures. It's kinda like the same thing except... you know with words. And lots of sitting on your ass.

There's no doubt that Rodriguez understands fun whenever he steps behind a camera. Just look at his films, Spy Kids, Planet Terror, the upcoming Machete, and Sin City plus some more of his films that I haven't seen yet such as El Mariachi. They don't try to be more than what they are on celluloid and I like that about his films.

I enjoyed this script, it was a fun romp.

4/5

Vocabulary of the Day:

Clandestine:

to hide, to secretly conduct. Hidden.

KGB operates in clandestine operations.

Yeah, I got lazy with the sentance. Why KGB? because I just finished watching Deadliest Warrior on SpikeTV where they paired up an I.R.A. against a Russian Spetznaz. C'mon like that's a fucking contest? Russians pwn everyone in everything, they fight for Mother Russia and are hardcore motherfuckers of hardcore motherfuckers.

Just listen to their anthem



Hell I'd give my life for mother Russia after listening to that Anthem. That my friends is why Russia won at almost everything they did back in their golden days.

Toy Story 3 Review

Toy Story remains one of those magical stories that a young immediately child understands. Toys are a special thing in our lives. They provided hours of endless fun and sparked my imagination. Toy Story is such a genius idea because of that special relationship each one of us had with our toys when we were young.

They were the actors in my little make believe world, often time switching between the good guys and bad guys to fulfill a role for a toy I didn't have. Growing up with a lot of television programs that weren't of the Saturday morning variety meant that when the afternoon hits, I had little to do besides watching television. Often times, I'd pick up my Optimus Primal action figure and replay episodes of Beasties or start to come up with new adventures for my toys to go on. It's a rinse/repeat strategy that really worked for me, buy the action figures, re-enact the episodes and once you're bored with that, make up a new one.

Something about the toys that I had made me treat them like they were real beings. Call it an overactive imagination of a small child, toys were my best friends for a large part of my young life. The idea that Toys had a life of their own was not a distant idea for my young counterpart. The toys I had were in many ways, real to me. They were more than just toys, they were friends.

Now, almost 15 years since the first Toy Story came out, Pixar releases yet another Toy Story. Considering Hollywood's track record with the third film in any film franchise (T3, Alien Ressurection, Episode VI, and the much maligned Spider-man 3 which I actually liked), Pixar has a lot of live up to.

The story takes place eleven years after the second film, Andy's grown up and is about to go to college. The toys have been feeling a little bit neglected by their favourite owner. They haven't been played in years and the closest thing to interaction they have is an elaborate scheme to call Andy's cellphone to just hear his voice. After Andy's mom gives him an ultimatum to either put the toys in the attic or donate them, Andy takes out the garbage bad and stuffs his old toys in it but decides to keep his favourite, Woody. The toys of course believe that they're being thrown away but are actually being put in the attic.

Figuring out that they're being trashed, the toys decide that that the next best thing is to be donated to a Daycare. Woody, being the patriarch of the group and being the only one who knows the truth about Andy's intentions, tries to convince the rest of the gang that they weren't being thrown away, but in the process, ends up being transported to the Day Care himself. Once there, the toys discover that Sunnyside Day care is everything they wanted and more, once kids grow up, a new batch comes in and they always get new kids to play.

The toys deal with issues of abandonment but Woody, being the loyal toy that he is, refuses to believe there is any life outside of being Andy's toys. The film explores many themes of growing up, it's truly a film that everyone can appreciate.

What can I say about this film? It's pitch perfect. There's emotional resonance, it studies the pain of growing apart, growing up and finding a new life as you leave the old one behind. The characters knew that the day was coming when their owner out grows them, they accepted that fact in the second movie. But now, eleven years later, things turned out to be different. Perhaps they're not as prepared as they thought they were.

Now I did feel that the story does retread some of the same old ground that the previous films did, such as buzz being crazy as well as the idea of being trapped in a place they didn't want to be in and have to escape to reach back to Andy. I also felt that the film at times were too loaded with too many characters, we don't spend ample time with each of the side characters to get a true sense of who they are (though I only say this because I wanted to see more of them, didn't want the film to end). Ken is an instant favourite new addition to the Toy Story family and he is hilariously voiced by Micheal Keaton.

What Pixar does so well with every movie that they make is that they're fearless storytellers. Unlike many of Hollywood's studios, Pixar spends a huge amount of time concentrating on the story and the characters before moving into the productions. Story comes first and time and time again, they have come out on top and have consistently become one of Hollywood's most critically and commercially successful studios.

It's a film about growing up and letting go of the days of youth, it's about realizing that you can't hold on to those things that you hold dear to your heart, and that a part of growing up is the painful acknowledgement of moving one.

And now, I finally have the honour to say that Pixar has the dubious honur of producing the second film in which I have cried.

5/5
*****

Van Damme vs Segal Script Review

While I consider myself a fan of the action movie genre, I admittedly have not watched many of Van Damme or Seagal's movies, well, not the good ones anyways (I was always more of an Arnold guy). My exposure to Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme stems from late nights of procrastinating at UC Davis lamenting why I was there while watching one of their direct to DVD features on USA, hiding the fact I was watching this shit from my sleeping roommate (How I wasn't watching porno instead is anyone's guess, cause you know, it's a normal guy thing to do. Me, I was watching some big chubby dude with a ponytail chopping bad guys down while wearing a Kimono).

This isn't to say I don't appreciate what these guys have done in their careers. They, along with Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone singlehandedly became the faces of hardcore badass action. The 80's were the era of hyper-masculinity, The men's men. The men women all wanted to sleep with but didn't want to because they were too busy shooting things and making stuff go BOOM. After a life of killing bad guys, having gratuitous sex just doesn't seem to cut it anymore and the only way of living is killing more bad guys and having a one on one fight with some Freddy Mercury wannabe in a Chainmail vest(Check Commando), at least that's how I imagine being an action hero.

So when I heard about Van Damme vs Seagal last year, I knew that it had to be a must read. While I'm unfamiliar with the films of said subjects, Seagal and Van Damme are those kinds of figures that make their way into the social consciousness. Even if you never saw their movies, you knew who they were, and you knew how they acted. Nothing about these guys ever changed throughout the years, they acted the same in real life like they do in the movies (well, one could argue there's not much acting going on in the first place, but you don't watch an action film for the acting, you watch it for the guns and explosions and cheesy one liners).

In the beginning of the script, we see a ninja spy figure hopping around the rooftops in the moonlight and breaking into Steven Seagal's house. We assume that he's on some operation that involves an action sequence but no, he's only on recon. The ninja takes what information he has and relays it back to... Jean Claude Van Damme. Apparently, their rivalry with each other has turned into a "anything you can do I can do better" pissing contest. So when Jean Claude discovers Seagal is writing an autobiography, then he concludes that he has to have one as well.

In comes Dave. He's a struggling writer who has just finished his passion project about a a foreign feminist that no one except him gives a crap about. Of course it doesn't sell well, and because he's short on cash to help a bunch of orphans, he reluctantly takes another job as Jean Claude Van Damme's autobiographer. It's through Dave that we are introduced to the wonderful world of Jean Claude Van Damme.

So we basically get a script that for 60 or so pages, engulfs us into the bizarre rivalry between Van Damme and Seagal. Dave is a passive character for most of the story and isn't much of a player in any of the events. The last act is when things really pick up, as the script turns from a comedy about Van Damme and Seagal into a full on spoof of Van Damme and Seagal movies. The action scenes are nothing too spectacular but there are some hilarious moments in the script that I would pay to see really happen between Van Damme and Seagal.

Really, the main character of Dave is rather inconsequential. He's basically our vehicle into the world of Van Damme and Seagal. Dave isn't the most compelling character to follow but we're not here for Dave, we're here to see Van Damme and Seagal in all their hilarity! We see how absurd this entire rivalry is, everything that could be made into a competition becomes a competition between them and it's fun to see how the stupid things these characters of the actors we love can be. Mirror on a stick anyone? (Read the script)

This has a direct to DVD feel to it. The script isn't calling for a huge budget because it's not a story with intense action (though there are some action scenes). It's a lampoon on two of the biggest action stars whose stars have faded long ago. The script doesn't take too many risks but damned if I didn't enjoy it. And it does teach you an important lesson in screenwriting, make it fun! Would they actually set out to make this movie? Chances are, no, their egos are too inflated to do such a movie. Alas the only Van Damme and Seagal movie that exists hovers between "never" and "going to happen". But one could dream.

3.5/5

Oh triggerstreet how I loathe your scripts...

I think that I deserve to rant a little about the quality of scripts that I come across on the screenwriting community website known as Triggerstreet.com. For a little bit of back story about the site, it was originally founded by Kevin Spacey and some other dude to provide a community for aspiring writers to share their stories and offer feedback to one another, though at this time, I feel it mostly serves as a place where actors like Kevin Spacey sit in their five million dollar mansion laughing maniacally while reading the multitudes of bad scripts like it was some kind fucked up experiment to weed out writers and laugh at their half ass attempts to write a story.

You see, I've been lurking around the website for a while, my profile tells me that I joined sometime in March of last year so I guess I'll believe what my profile says. I've reviewed about thirteen scripts. Figure about 1 script a month on the website. None of which I can say honestly say is anything close to being good. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "13 scripts? Muthafucka, that ain't nothing to shit your pants about. Read more before bitching about it you jizz cake".

I would agree with you, but unlike most of the reviewers on that sight looking to earn enough credits to upload a script to have other people review their shit, I actually like giving some time and thought into doing my reviews. It's a great learning process for me. Considering the quality of the scripts I DO read, it's better to read them in small doses. Like a script per month or if I really don't feel like it, only do one when I have "free time", (it fills up quite quickly in between playing video games, reading about writing, thinking about writing and all around dicking on the internet).

Now, I'm not saying that I'm any good at doing it, but considering the minimum requirement for a review consists of nothing more than a slightly longer version of what a paragraph should be, (Highschool taught me a regular paragraph is a topic sentence, three sentences for evidence and a concluding sentence, doing the math, 5 sentences for a paragraph, just imagine a few more sentences and you get the minimum requirement), I think I go above and beyond what normal reviewers go for.

I guess what pisses me off is when I encounter a script that's so messy, it's beyond comprehension. I have to give a review that offers constructive criticism that's going to give you some (hopefully) helpful points to make it better, it's suppose to help ignite a few questions in your head on how to make the story better. But dammit don't submit a script on the site where most of the problems are going to be alleviated by a quick visit to a few writing blogs and screenwriting forums. Hell, I got some links on my blog, Go Into The Story, MSP, even Scriptshadow, use these website, or better yet, lurk around the forums and learn a thing or two before submitting that script about some sci-fi adventure with aliens and the devil while the main character's juggling with sexual problems. I hate it when I get assigned a script where the writer seems to have submitted a vomit draft. Luckily, because I only have reviewed 13 scripts on the site, I've only encountered two truly big piles of a mess. But those scripts piss me off to no extent. It prevents me from doing what I'm supposed to do, give feedback. I don't feel that I can give proper feedback if a script is all over the place, I can't zero in on what the author is trying to say, what themes strike them as the most important, what direction they want to take their characters, plot points, escalating conflicts, ticking time bombs, making sure that your character is the architect of his/her success as well as failures; there's a whole laundry list of things I try to look out for in trying to give a proper review because those are the things I try to put in my scripts.

Here's the crux of what I believe, it's fucking hard to write something good. People may hear the success stories of Tarantino or Shane Black who managed to knock one out of the park on their first try. So you figure, hell I'll finish my first draft and hope for the best, you never know what can happen. Guess what? Chances are you ain't gonna be the next Tarantino. So strap your ass down, write something comprehensible, and maybe I won't be such a whiny ass bitch about reading the scripts.

In essence, fellow aspiring scribes, help me help you. If you're going to half ass a script and post it up for a review by someone like me who actually gives a damn and doesn't half ass a review just to get my credits so some other poor bastard gets to read my piece, please, leave it on your computer and reread it in a couple weeks, hell maybe even a couple months later. Edit it yourself and try to understand your own story. Save me the hassle of trying to decipher what you're trying to tell me in the story. It's not going to help you if I keep pointing out inconsistencies in plot and character motivations. It's a lot of wasted space to comment on those things. But when all the story has is nothing but those elements, I can't do anything too constructive with it.

Now, I'm not blind to the fact that some people NEED some kind of feedback, no matter how much a mess it is. But think about it this way. On Triggerstreet, writers don't have the obligation to spend a few hours reading your script and going over the script and going page by page with a fine comb (I certainly don't, but I think I put in more effort than most reviewers on the site). If it's a mess, you can't expect somebody on the internet willingly going through the tortuous process of trying to give you advice on things you should know while trying to figure out what the story is. Don't be surprised if the review you get is some half ass 100 word review that only gives generalities about what works for them and what doesn't.

Rant over - Seacrest Out

I guess this means I should start doing more reviews of actual scripts. I have a few I've been meaning to write about, but I guess I get lazy. Since this is summer, I should be able to squeeze out a few reviews of Hollywood Scripts.

Coming to a Nightmare near you...

Had one of the more fucked up dreams in a while. I guess this plays into the fears of most little children. How many of you can say that a visit to the dentist's was the worst part of your week? It didn't help any that one of my more painful experiences with the dental office was sitting in the cold leather dental chair while a (what I remembered) team of dentists were pulling out a tooth that was rotting from a cavity. Every time afterwards, I'd get nervous once the appointment comes around, the worst of it in my early adolescence where I'd start getting dry heaves just thinking about getting my teeth examined. Me and dentists don't have a good track record to say the least.

Now on to my nightmare... the dentist. The dude spent a better part of an hour or two fucking with the insides of a poor bastards mouth. He was like a cross between the doctor from Beethoven and Josef Mengele. I remember feeling like Duncan Keith after taking a puck to the face while hearing the horrible screams of his next victim. For some reason, the dream turned into a bit of an action movie and federal agents soon swarmed the building. The good doctor took off blasting through some walls. Some dude went in after him and later came back with a severed head; whether or not this is the doctor in question remains to be solved by my unconscious.

Also in a bit of happier dreams, Olivia Wilde was teaching a math class that I was taking.



Not being the least bit related to the previous one but hey, having Olivia Wilde entering your dreams after dreaming that a doctor was performing horrible experiments with the mouths of many victims is a pretty damn good transition. Could she enter my dreams more often? Talk about fulfilling my fantasy with hot teachers. Now if only that could really happen in real life. I'd have her tutor my pythagorean theroem. Seriously, I suck at math and I need all the help I need.